Pyatakov made a false confession at the time, saying: "Here I stand before you as a filthy creature, humiliated for crimes committed by my hand, stripped of everything because of my mistakes; a man who lost his party, has no friends and lost his family. I am the man who lost himself." Pyatakov was executed for these alleged crimes shortly after that and was one of many.
How did the Soviets convince so many defendants to testify to these lies? Some observers were convinced they had developed a secret tool to force people to do and say things. It wasn't just about their ability to force people to lie and say specific things; it was even stranger that their victims actually believed the lies they told.
The Soviets used several methods to obtain confessions and were not ashamed to resort to brutal methods. Some of the signed confessions in the archive reveal bloodstains. The defendants were repeatedly questioned until they felt they were “robots.” They were held in solitary confinement but within walking distance of other prisoners who were beaten on their ears.
Initially, there was no widely used term to explain such attempts at coercive persuasion; this changed after the victory of the founder of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong, in China and the Korean War that followed a few years later.
Edward Hunter, an advocate, and promoter of the United States Office of Strategic Services in wartime, is credited with coining the term “brainwashing” in 1950 to explain the vague confessions extracted from prisoners of war.
After the brutal treatment, some victims confessed to false charges and seemed to sympathize with their jailers. Brainwashing later featured prominently in the film "The Manchurian Candidate." The evil Dr. Yen Lo explains to a communist conspirator that his American prisoner, “who, having been trained to kill, did not remember that he was killed; he was not only brainwashed; he was dehydrated.”
With this history, it is no wonder that the concept of brainwashing, everything about it looks bleak and reeks of the Cold War and dubious science, has been criticized.
Some people believe that the term has been used as a weapon to attack followers of new movements. Others hate the term because it seems to blame victims for being naïve and weak, although some cases of brainwashing victims have involved very talented individuals.
But some people overlook that this kind of dark persuasion happens in extreme situations- when victims lose their minds.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein likened the new word to a new seed planted in the land of debate, but it may also resemble a harmful plant.
Some experts preferred the term "coercive persuasion" to explain the unusual behaviors observed between prisoners of war and hostages who - paradoxically - sided with their attackers or made manifestly false and self-destructive confessions.
Despite expert research on the subject, many still regard brainwashing as a myth and a ghost story from the past.
“Forced persuasion” -which we will frequently use interchangeably with the term “brainwashing” -is a term that is difficult to discuss further. Obviously, people can be forced to do things, but it also seems that people can be forced to believe things under certain circumstances. We can see this often in cases of false confessions and Stockholm Syndrome (where the hostage develops loyalty to his captors).
There is even concern today that social media is forcibly trying to persuade followers to teach people unreasonable information and then believe it, for example, the spread of a rumor that “vaccines cause autism” or that “ the coronavirus is not worth worrying about”.
Can social media contribute to forced persuasion? To answer this question, one must know more clearly the situations that lead to forced persuasion.
Russian physiologist and Nobel laureate Ivan Pavlov can be called the father of forced persuasion. When the Neva River in St. Petersburg flooded in 1924, Pavlov had unique insights into the effects of trauma on behavior.
The river flooded his dog factory and almost drowned his dogs locked in cages. What happened next was that Pavlov noticed that the dogs after the incident were not the same as before; they forgot their learned behaviors, and the shock changed their behavior.
Pavlov, the perpetual experimenter, was re-exposing one of his traumatized dogs to droplets of water in the experimental room; this again disrupted the trained dog's response.
Thanks to his tremendous patience and skill, Pavlov prepared a dog to respond to a particular note on the musical scale. The fact that stunned him was the idea that trauma could disrupt such rigorous training.
Soviet leader Lenin was fascinated by the possibility of using Pavlov's approach to influence the Russian people. The Soviet government provided financial support to a research institute with hundreds of employees. Pavlov noted that factors such as sudden stress, sleep deprivation, isolation, and systematic patience all contributed to the change in dogs' behavior.
Brainwashing cues emerged during successive periods during Stalin's experiments in the 1930s, the 1940s when wartime governments searched for drugs to speed up interrogation, and the early Cold War years when governments raced to persuade enemies to defect.
Throughout the 20th century, governments invested heavily in the search for forced persuasion. Also, government agencies, institutions, and universities collaborated on extensive studies on the use of drugs to change behavior or extract information.
They also showed that sensory deprivation and sleep restriction increase persuasiveness. For example, in one line of research, people listened to persuasive audio recordings on a particular topic, and some did so while placed in a dark, quiet room for sensory deprivation.
After completing their experiments, volunteers in sensory deprivation tended to show greater interest in the subjects. In some cases, the effect of the recordings became more pronounced.
Coercive persuasion seems most effective when the victim is isolated from other opinions and beliefs. I wish all these studies had used volunteers, but some drug trials have been conducted on unconscious victims.
In a midnight climax study in the 1950s and 1960s, CIA agents rented an apartment in San Francisco. They hired girls to introduce the drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) into their agents' drinks to see if they would more easily divulge the information.
Therefore, brainwashing has a more substantial history than it might seem at first glance, but it will always seem illusory unless there are clear ways to evaluate it. So, what are its specific and measurable characteristics?
First, coercive persuasion usually involves subtle manipulation. Individuals may not even know they are being targeted. Moreover, certain actions and deeds are taken at the expense of the targeted individuals so that another person benefits from this manipulation.
To a certain degree, sleep deprivation is often part of the system. This leaves the victim exhausted and confused, so forced persuasion seems most effective when the victim is isolated from other opinions and beliefs.
As a thought experiment, let us suggest how these cases can be categorized and examine how they appear in documented cases. There are countless examples of alleged brainwashing, but many experts will include the Bolsheviks' confessions during Stalin's “Moscow Trials” in the late 1930s and the behavior of Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty during his trial in 1949.
Most will also classify the way some American POWs during the Korean War and some victims of the CIA's secret MKUltra experiments in the 1950s and 1970s as brainwashing attempts.
In fact, an MK Ultra-funded program in Montreal exposed people to intense electroshock therapy, repeated doses of the drug LSD, and a quarter of a million or more tapes documenting how their behavior changed.
Finally, it is worth considering cases in which coercive persuasion tactics are used that can be said to be lethal. These cases will achieve a high score on the variables that are supposed to occur in the case of forced persuasion, while cases of abstract persuasion will cause changes with low scores.
In assessing each of these dire situations, we have to ask this series of questions:
Has there been a change in the sleep system of the victims?
Sleep is often used as an effective way to manipulate victims, whether by interrogators, hostage takers, or cults.
Often, a particular party will begin its rituals over the victims after a period of sleep deprivation. When sleep decreases, the ability to make correct judgments deteriorates, and people become more obedient. One can assess the severity of the effect of sleep manipulation as a brainwashing technique by measuring the frequency of its imposition consistently and comprehensively.
One of the few things that many conservatives and liberals seem to agree on is the dark persuasion capabilities of social media. Was there evidence of forced isolation in one form or another?
Well, sensory deprivation and isolation from friends and family are essential to forced persuasion. One can assess the extent of this isolation by looking for answers to these questions:
Is the victim prevented from leaving the place, communicating with others, or just being discouraged from communicating with strangers? And how much invisible control has been imposed on the victims?
Were the victims given drugs that made them unconscious?
If so, was it done in one phase or several times? And was the operation done invisibly?
Were victims forced to participate in rituals that incited them to feel guilty or demeaned, or were they put in a situation where they were subjected to harsh collective criticism?
Was it in the interest of the victim or the interest of someone else?
Coercive persuasion usually occurs in places where the victim's freedom and safety are at risk and where another person benefits from the deterioration of the person's or victim's condition.
It is, therefore, possible to assess this situation by knowing the extent to which persuasive tactics involve imprisoning victims or endangering their safety.
So, when it becomes clear that these conditions have been met, the idea of victims being coerced is likely. In Jonestown, for example, people have been restricted from leaving, and communication with strangers has been severely limited. They have been forced to make humiliating confessions and are chronically deprived of sleep. As a result, more than 900 people died after being sacrificed by their leader.
Talking about coercive persuasion and including it in one context or another is not necessarily to put the recipient between two options, either white or black. There are contemporary cases that make us consider the emergence of new trends in persuasion. As mentioned earlier, the possibility of coercive persuasion through social media is questionable.
This question needs careful consideration and the questions may be: Can social media be used to isolate, coerce, or make people feel shame? If this manipulation occurs, is it done covertly? Or is it clearly happening?
Can social media encourage people to risk their own safety to ensure the safety of others? Is it possible for social media to interfere with users' sleep systems?
For over a century, observations have accumulated that show people can be forced to do certain things and forcibly persuaded to believe them, so it would be illogical to reject and not accept these signs.
If we ignore the potential brainwashing developments of the 21st century, we will all be easily isolated and victimized by such situations.
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