Did you study anything from there (and can provide references) or just use your imagination?
KGB failed to prevent catastrophic dissolution of USSR and you suggest that they are some sort of masterminds who excelled in propaganda. That’s quite an exaggeration. Since 1990s both the West and Russia have lost their expertise in each other’s affairs. Russia may still have some influence in Central and Eastern Europe, but their conservative ideological drift limits significantly what they can achieve. A lot of local political mess there is basically local politicians shooting in the leg.
I am from Ukraine, and we have KGB archives opened for a while now.
It is a massive amount of information and it is studied rigorously by a lot of researchers. Unfortunately, most of the information I consumed are in Ukrainian. For example there is a book in Ukrainian released just few years ago from one of those [0]. But basically any researcher can get access to the whole archive and domestic ones wrote a lot of material. I am sure that it will get more popular on the west as well, while people will get understanding of the systems at work.
As far as I know Timothy Snyder is well known for his researches into Russia in his books such as [1]. However I've read only excerpts from it as we have better material in Ukrainian.
West generally doesn't understand Russia, it overestimates its military power and underestimates its propaganda influence. It also completely misunderstands its culture. Also west have a history to dismiss the voices of countries who do know Russia very well. But it is changing bit by bit.
It's a much lower bar to sow discord and chaos vs. being able to maintain a stable, functioning, low-corruption society. Just because a country is capable of one does not mean that they are capable of the other; also, the characteristics that lead a country to be effective in the former may prevent them from being successful at the latter.
There are several theories in this, which may feel plausible but ignore some other possibilities.
First, the assumption that Russian propaganda works on the West. There are no signs of that.
Second, that Russia does have those capabilities. Their main problem is that they don’t understand the modern West and still think in categories and definitions of XX century.
Third, that West is vulnerable. Western domestic propaganda is much more powerful and it’s budgets are much bigger.
> First, the assumption that Russian propaganda works on the West. There are no signs of that.
Wow, that is the statement. I would say that Russian propaganda is the mainstream now in conservative media and among republicans.
Half of Joe Rogan's talking points is spreading russia propaganda, half of Lex Fridman opinions - is russia propaganda. Elon Musk retweets and amplifies russia propaganda all day every day.
The problem is - you just don't know when you hear it since you don't have a frame of reference.
It is the same as I don't recognise Chinese or North Korean propaganda. Sometimes I see an obvious example of it on reddit, but in general, I cannot immediately recognise it when I hear it (since half of the top reddit commends are bots - I have problem to sometimes understand what their goals are).
I don't know whether they understand the west or not, but my intuition is that the understanding is not required.
With modern social media you have enough feedback to perform complex information operations and have the desired outcomes.
KGB failed to prevent catastrophic dissolution of USSR and you suggest that they are some sort of masterminds who excelled in propaganda. That’s quite an exaggeration. Since 1990s both the West and Russia have lost their expertise in each other’s affairs. Russia may still have some influence in Central and Eastern Europe, but their conservative ideological drift limits significantly what they can achieve. A lot of local political mess there is basically local politicians shooting in the leg.