The Best Enemies Money Can Buy – Antony C Sutton | Liberty in Our Time
The Financiers Play Both Sides
How Western Powers Engineered the Soviet Military Threat
The late Professor Antony C. Sutton proves conclusively that the United States financed the economic and military development of the Soviet Union.
Without this aid, financed by U.S. taxpayers, there would be no significant Soviet military threat, for there would be no Soviet economy to support the Soviet military machine, let alone sophisticated military equipment. This interview was conducted by Dr. Stanley Monteith in the early 1980s.
“It’s a power grab.
Prof Anthony C Sutton
An international power grab.”
Engineering Oppression
In the shadowy realms of psychological warfare, propaganda, and social engineering, few revelations are as striking as the research of Antony C. Sutton, a late 20th-century economist and historian who exposed a profound paradox: the United States and its Western allies were instrumental in financing and equipping the Soviet Union, the very adversary they claimed to oppose during the Cold War.
The Hidden Hand Behind the Soviet Military-Industrial Complex
Sutton’s meticulous investigations, documented in works such as National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union and Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, reveal that the Soviet Union‘s formidable military and economic power was not an isolated communist achievement but was built largely on Western technology, capital, and corporate collaboration. This assistance came directly or indirectly from American taxpayers and corporations, often under the guise of peaceful trade or détente policies.
The Soviet strategy exploited a cyclical pattern of “détente” and aggression. While publicly promoting peace and cooperation, the USSR simultaneously used Western technology to strengthen its military-industrial complex and wage proxy wars, such as in Korea and Vietnam, where American lives were lost fighting Soviet-backed forces. This duality-a hallmark of Soviet psychological tactics-exploited Western policymakers’ inability to reconcile contradictory Soviet behavior, effectively weaponizing Western goodwill against itself.
Psychological Warfare and Propaganda: The Illusion of Peace
The West’s acceptance of détente was heavily influenced by propaganda that painted economic engagement as a path to mellowing Soviet totalitarianism. Sutton dismantled this myth, showing that despite decades of trade and technological transfer, the Soviet regime’s repression of dissidents, religious minorities, and ethnic groups continued unabated. Soviet leaders openly declared the United States as their prime enemy, while Western governments clung to illusions of peace for political and financial convenience.
This manipulation functioned as a form of social engineering on a geopolitical scale. By encouraging the belief that trade and cooperation would lead to peace, Western elites facilitated a continuous flow of resources to the USSR, empowering it to sustain and escalate conflicts that served the interests of military-industrial complexes on both sides.
Corporate Interests and the Long Game of “Corporate Socialism”
Sutton’s research also uncovered the role of Western financial elites and corporations in nurturing collectivist regimes like the Soviet Union. Far from ideological opponents, certain American financiers and corporations viewed the USSR as a “captive market and a technical colony” to be exploited for monopoly profits. This “corporate socialism” blurred ideological lines, revealing a long-range strategy to control wealth through state-managed economies rather than free markets.
Such revelations expose a sophisticated layer of psychological and economic warfare, where propaganda masked the reality of cooperation between supposed enemies, and social engineering was employed to maintain public support for policies that ultimately armed both sides of the Cold War.
The Psychological Battlefield of the Cold War
Antony C. Sutton‘s work reveals that the Cold War was not merely a clash of ideologies but a complex theater of psychological warfare, propaganda, and social engineering. The West’s financing of the Soviet military-industrial complex-often unbeknownst to its own citizens-served to perpetuate conflict, benefiting entrenched corporate and political interests while costing countless lives.
Understanding this dynamic is crucial for decoding how narratives of peace and hostility can be manipulated to serve hidden agendas, a lesson that remains profoundly relevant in today’s geopolitical and informational battles.
Genrikh Yagoda
The Role of Genrikh Yagoda in Soviet State Terror and the Murder of Millions
Building on Antony C. Sutton‘s revealing exposé of how Western financial and corporate interests enabled the Soviet Union‘s economic and military rise, the role of internal Soviet actors in consolidating and enforcing this power cannot be overlooked. Central among these figures was Genrikh Yagoda,
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda was a central figure in the machinery of Soviet repression during the 1930s. As head of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) from 1934 to 1936, Yagoda was instrumental in orchestrating the early stages of Stalin’s Great Purge, which led to the imprisonment, torture, and execution of millions, including countless Christians who were targeted for their faith and perceived opposition to the regime.
Yagoda’s Role in Political Repression and Show Trials
Yagoda’s tenure as NKVD chief coincided with the infamous Moscow Show Trials, where prominent Old Bolsheviks such as Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev were forced to confess to fabricated crimes and subsequently executed. These trials were a key part of Stalin’s campaign to eliminate political rivals and consolidate absolute power. Yagoda supervised these arrests, confessions, and executions, helping to institutionalise state terror as a tool of governance.
Expansion of the Gulag and Forced Labor Camps
Before becoming NKVD chief, Yagoda was deputy head of the OGPU, the Soviet secret police predecessor, where he expanded the use of forced labor camps (Gulag system). Under his direction, massive infrastructure projects like the White Sea–Baltic Canal were built through brutal forced labor, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of prisoners. Many of these prisoners were Christians persecuted for their beliefs or accused of anti-Soviet activities.
Persecution and Murder of Christians
The Soviet regime under Stalin sought to eradicate religion, viewing it as a threat to communist ideology. Christians, particularly Russian Orthodox believers, were subjected to mass arrests, deportations, and executions. Yagoda’s NKVD was at the forefront of this campaign, targeting clergy and laypersons alike. Churches were closed or destroyed, religious leaders were sent to gulags or executed, and believers were forced underground. This campaign contributed to the murder and suffering of millions of Christians during the 1930s.
Yagoda’s Downfall and Legacy
Despite his brutal efficiency, Yagoda fell out of favour with Stalin, partly due to perceived failures in managing the purges and the political fallout from the Kirov assassination investigation. He was arrested, subjected to a show trial himself, and executed in 1938. His death underscored the lethal nature of Stalin’s regime, where even the architects of terror were disposable.
Yagoda’s role reveals the dark intersection of psychological warfare, state terror, and social engineering, where mass murder and repression were systematically deployed to reshape Soviet society and eliminate dissent, including religious communities.
Further Reading and Sources
- Genrikh Yagoda | EBSCO Research Starters
- Genrikh Yagoda – Wikipedia
- Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda | Britannica
- The Roles of Yagoda, Yezhov & Beria – History: Edexcel A Level
Books by Antony C. Sutton
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
http://tinyurl.com/orvzw
National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union
http://tinyurl.com/8wvxgsz
The Best Enemy Money Can Buy
http://tinyurl.com/947gunc
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (Volume 1) 1917 to 1930
http://tinyurl.com/9npwtwf
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (Volume 2) 1930 to 1945
http://tinyurl.com/9may5h5
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (Volume 3) 1945 to 1965
http://tinyurl.com/8tnsa3w
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
http://tinyurl.com/ev3rp
Related links:
Building Communism
http://tinyurl.com/9y8o3wo
Building the Evil Empire
http://tinyurl.com/97lwhpm
The East Came West
http://tinyurl.com/9t9jg5e
The Looters
http://tinyurl.com/9chw4bg
Aid and Trade Treachery: Building an Enemy
http://tinyurl.com/8pg33ex
From Major Jordan’s Diaries
http://tinyurl.com/8uab4zk
East Minus West = Zero: Russia‘s Debt to the Western World, 862-1962
http://tinyurl.com/9t56s4k
Birds of a Feather: American and Soviet Traders Are Flocking Together
http://tinyurl.com/9jpqhv6
Communist China: Made in the U.S.A.
http://tinyurl.com/8o32arr
Betraying China
http://tinyurl.com/8n6aasg
Castro’s Cuba: Made in the U.S.A.
http://tinyurl.com/9ashwt8
The Convergence Connection
http://tinyurl.com/9232b37
No Accident: The Continuing Betrayal of American Interests Is a Matter of Policy
http://tinyurl.com/c9aqe52
Sowing Salt: Disarmament and the New World Order
http://tinyurl.com/8hnnmmz
Source: The Best Enemies Money Can Buy An Interview with Prof Antony C Sutton
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