alternatehistory.com

So, I'm reading a book about Soviet espionage in the US before and during WW2, and came across something interesting:

The Haunted Wood said:
Peter Gutzeit [a Soviet agent]... sent his superiors a memorandum in June 1938 regarding "our work here [in America] in the field of big politics." Gutzeit had been in the country for five years, unusually long for Soviet intelligence chiefs in that decade. He recognized the amounts other major countries, but not the Soviet Union, were spending in the United States "on propaganda" to influence American policies, public opinion, and the press "as well as [on] bribing political figures in the government, Senate, and Congress..."

Gutzeit's memo did not advocate bribing key figures... or stealing documents, but rather spending significant funds to shape the attitudes of sympathetic political and public sectors toward Soviet interests. In an assessment decades ahead of his time, Gutzeit tried to persuade his superiors in Moscow that such efforts would help to produce within the Roosevelt Administration, Congress, and the American public "a certain number of people (ours) who by their speeches and all their work would influence U.S. policy."

Elsewhere, the book discusses how Gutzeit's plan included buying American newspapers, bribing journalists to write pro-Soviet articles, and using bribes and campaign donations to try to build up a pro-Soviet block in Congress. His proposed budget started at $500,000 to $1,000,000, equivalent to $7.6 to $15 million today. Gutzeit already had one agent for the proposed Congressional block, Samuel Dickstein, a US representative (who IOTL proved to be mostly a waste of money).

Shortly after proposing this plan, Gutzeit was recalled to Moscow and purged.

What if Moscow had decided to go for it?
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