Project Exploit USSR

Project Exploit USSR was a classified psychological operations study completed in March 1962, catalogued as "Psyops vulnerabilities in the Soviet Union." It consisted of a five-volume typescript organized into: (1) orientation and summary; (2) component social systems of the Soviet Union; (3) synthesis and overview. The study was classified at the Classified level.¹

The project's purpose was to identify exploitable vulnerabilities in Soviet society for use in psychological warfare targeting. Its structure, moving from social systems analysis to operational synthesis, mirrors the format used in other psychological vulnerability assessments produced by SORO (the Special Operations Research Office, later CRESS) and HumRRO for non-Soviet targets during the same period. The 1959 document "Research on psychological and political effects of military postures," produced by the Defense Science Board Working Group of the Advisory Panel on Psychology and Social Science, and the Russia entries in the US psychological warfare country guide table (with Russia appearing in 1962, 1964, and 1966 editions) provide context for the sustained institutional interest in Soviet psychological targeting that Project Exploit USSR represents.¹

No further details about authorship or sponsoring agency are in the available record; in some cases title pages were removed from documents before they were made accessible to outside researchers.¹