If the Soviet Union was not brought down by economic catastrophe or popular uprising, then another explanation must be sought. The evidence points towards a deliberate process of demolition, orchestrated by a faction within the Soviet elite that had given up on the system. Figures like Mikhail Gorbachev and his chief ideologue, Alexander Yakovlev, were not merely reformers; they were radicals who had concluded that the core tenets of Marxism-Leninism were obsolete. Their policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) acted less as reforms and more as controlled demolitions, systematically removing the ideological and political pillars that held the state together. The crucial question is: were these men solely the authors of their own disillusionment, or were they being guided?
This is where the narrative deepens, moving from internal decay to external manipulation. The architect of this strategy may well have been James Jesus Angleton, the legendary and paranoid chief of CIA Counterintelligence. After the trauma of discovering high-level Soviet moles like Kim Philby, Angleton became obsessed with the idea of a "Monster Plot." His strategic genius lay in inverting this paranoia into an offensive weapon: if you could not find every Soviet agent, you could instead corrupt the source. The goal became not to defeat the USSR in a hot war, but to encourage a "reformist" faction that would dismantle the system from within.
To execute a plot of such sensitivity and scale, Angleton needed a cut-out—a deniable intermediary. The perfect instrument was Mossad. Israel shared the paramount strategic goal of dismantling the USSR, which would cripple its primary Arab clients and open the doors for Jewish emigration. Mossad had form, most famously in stealing and leaking Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" in 1956, a masterstroke of political warfare that shattered the unity of the global communist movement.
The key was finding the perfect asset on the ground. That man was Robert Maxwell—the Czechoslovak-born, British media mogul. His very public persona as a corrupt, egomaniacal businessman was the perfect "legend," or cover story. Declassified eulogies confirm his deep, secret work for Israeli intelligence. Shabtai Shavit, the then-head of Mossad, stated at his funeral, "He did things for the state of Israel that will remain forever secret… and he did them without asking anything in return." This was no mere frie
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