Imagine scrolling through your newsfeed and suddenly finding a story that feels just off—too convenient, too polarizing, too perfectly designed to make you angry. You check the source, then the source’s source, and soon you’re tumbling down a rabbit hole of half-truths, manipulated images, and confident voices saying opposite things. If that experience sounds familiar, you are not alone. The Council Library has launched a series of reading lists specifically for people like you: policy professionals who work in areas touched by ongoing disinformation campaigns, as well as communicators and information specialists who encounter disinformation in their daily media environments. The goal is not to lecture you or to make you feel paranoid, but to help you build resilience through knowledge. When you understand how disinformation works, you are less likely to be pulled in by it, and you are better equipped to help others spot it too. This particular reading list is not for beginners. It assumes you already know the basics—what disinformation is, how it differs from misinformation, and why it matters. Instead, it invites you to go deeper into the origins and characteristics of one of the most persistent and well-documented cases of state-sponsored disinformation in modern history: that of Russia. It is a deep dive, but one that is grounded in history, sharpened by research, and ultimately useful for anyone trying to make sense of the information wars unfolding around us today.
Deception has probably existed for as long as conflict itself. You could argue that the first time one group of humans tried to trick another group into believing a false story before a battle, disinformation was born. But there is a crucial difference between ancient trickery and the organized, institutionalized deception that emerged in the Soviet Union under Stalin. It was there and then that disinformation became something more than a tactic; it became a discipline with its own methods, its own training, and its own goals. The Soviet state gave it a name—dezinformatsiya—and transformed it into a weapon of statecraft. This was not simply about telling lies. It was about carefully constructing narratives, planting them in places where they would be taken up by others, and then letting those narratives spread as if they had grown organically. The Soviets understood that a story told by a trusted journalist or a neutral observer was far more valuable than one told directly by an official source. They also understood that disinformation could be used not only to make enemies look bad, but also to distract, confuse, and exhaust audiences. It is often understated, but it is essential to grasp that contemporary Russian disinformation operations are deeply influenced by this historical Soviet doctrine. When we see reports of troll farms, manipulated videos, or coordinated campaigns on social media, we are not seeing something entirely new. We are seeing the latest version of a playbook that was developed, tested, and refined over decades inside the Soviet system. That is why the Council Library’s reading list places so much emphasis on history. To interpret what Moscow is doing today, we first need to understand what it did yesterday.
The Soviet Union used disinformation extensively during the Cold War, but the story goes back even further than that. Starting in the 1920s and intensifying under Stalin, the Soviet security services created elaborate mechanisms for spreading false narratives beyond the country’s borders. These were often called “active measures,” a broad term that covered everything from forging documents to funding friendly media outlets to planting false stories in foreign newspapers. The goal was not always to make the West believe something specific. Sometimes the goal was simpler and more corrosive: to make people doubt whether there was such a thing as objective truth at all. A famous example often cited in this context is Operation Trust in the 1920s, an elaborate counterintelligence operation that convinced anti-Soviet exiles that there was a powerful resistance movement inside the USSR, only to draw them out and neutralize them. Later, during the Cold War, the KGB used disinformation to exploit political and social tensions in Western societies, to undermine trust in democratic institutions, and to influence public opinion in ways that favored Soviet interests. The methods were often subtle and indirect. False reports might be planted in a small publication, then picked up by larger media outlets, and eventually cited as fact by government officials and intelligence agencies. By the time anyone realized the original source was fabricated, the story was already deeply embedded in the public consciousness. This was not a chaotic or improvised process. It was carefully planned, meticulously executed, and treated as a vital part of Soviet strategy. One of the most important lessons from that era is that disinformation tends to work best when it builds on existing fears and prejudices. It does not need to create suspicion from nothing; it simply needs to amplify what is already there.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many Western governments breathed a sigh of relief. It was tempting to believe that the threat of disinformation would die out along with the KGB. That did not happen. In fact, the people and structures behind Soviet active measures did not simply disappear. They adapted, renamed themselves, and found new masters and new missions. The post-Cold War period was not a quiet time for Russian disinformation, even if it was less visible or less alarming to Western audiences at first. During the chaotic and often painful transition of the 1990s, Russian intelligence services continued to run operations, sometimes on a smaller scale, sometimes in different directions. But the infrastructure remained in place, and so did the institutional memory. Skills did not have to be relearned because they were never forgotten. The same traditions, the same methods, and even some of the same personnel flowed directly into the new Russia. With the rise of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, the old playbook was not only dusted off; it was upgraded and integrated into the broader strategy of the Russian state. Disinformation became an integral part of Russian foreign policy, not as a one-off tool used in times of crisis, but as a permanent, ongoing operation. The tools changed—the internet, social media, and digital communications opened up vast new possibilities—but the underlying logic remained remarkably familiar. The goal was still to weaken adversaries, to fracture alliances, and to create a world in which people no longer know what to believe. The difference is that the reach and speed of modern communication have made these old techniques more dangerous than ever before. A rumor that might have taken weeks to spread in the 1960s can now circle the globe in a matter of hours.
This is why understanding the Soviet roots of Russian disinformation is not just an academic exercise; it is the ultimate key to accurately interpreting what is happening today. There is a direct line between the Soviet doctrine of dezinformatsiya and the disinformation campaigns launched against Western audiences by the Russian Federation under Vladimir V. Putin. Commentators often treat Russian disinformation as if it were an entirely new phenomenon, a product of the internet age built on algorithms and troll farms. But this approach can mislead us. If we only look at the latest tweet or the newest manipulated video, we miss the deeper continuity: the way Moscow has historically conceived of information as a weapon, the way it has used deception to achieve strategic goals, and the way it has consistently assumed that the best way to undermine democratic societies is to make them doubt their own institutions. The reading list from the Council Library is designed to help you see these patterns clearly. It offers a detailed look at how Soviet disinformation operations were conceived and executed, drawing on both historical research and primary documents. By studying those operations, you can begin to recognize the fingerprints of the old doctrine in contemporary campaigns. You can learn to ask better questions: Is this story designed to exploit a particular division in our society? Does it fit a long-standing pattern of Russian influence operations? What is the underlying strategic goal? These are not easy questions to answer, but they are essential if we want to move beyond being passive consumers of information and become active, resilient participants in public life.
Of course, no single reading list can cover everything. The Council Library is clear that this list is not exhaustive, and it encourages readers to explore additional materials through Eureka, the online catalogue of the Council libraries. If you are just starting out, or if you want to revisit the fundamentals, the Council Library has also published previous posts on disinformation, including an introductory piece on what disinformation is and a separate post about finding factual information regarding the coronavirus pandemic. These resources are meant to support a community of informed readers who can recognize false information and respond thoughtfully. One thing to keep in mind is that the views expressed in these posts do not necessarily represent the positions, policies, or opinions of the Council of the European Union or the European Council. They are offered as research support, not as institutional advocacy. And even as the physical reading room remains closed, the Council Library’s Info Desk is still open online. If you have questions, if you need help finding a source, or if you simply want to chat about a topic in one of the reading lists, you can reach the Info Desk by email from Monday to Friday, between 10:00 and 16:00. The door may be closed, but the conversation is still open. And in a way, that is exactly what this reading list is about: keeping the conversation open, keeping the questions flowing, and learning to think more clearly in a world that is full of people who would prefer you not to think at all.