The BBC's international radio station (B2B)

No Master Brand

BBC World Service Core

The Documentary

Investigating global developments, issues and affairs.

The Wednesday Documentary: Useful Idiots

The Documentary: Useful Idiots: Episode 2

Episode 2

Useful Idiots

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Useful Idiots, Episode 2

Intelligent people manipulated by dictators into saying good things about bad regimes

John Sweeney explores why it was that so many supposedly intelligent people were manipulated by dictators over the 20th Century into saying good things about bad regimes.

The phrase 'useful idiots', supposedly Lenin’s, refers to Westerners duped into saying good things about bad regimes.

In political jargon it was used to describe Soviet sympathisers in Western countries and the attitude of the Soviet government towards them.

Useful idiots, in a broader sense, refers to Western journalists, travellers and intellectuals who gave their blessing – often with evangelistic fervour – to tyrannies and tyrants, thereby convincing politicians and public that utopias rather than Belsens thrived.

In part one John Sweeney looks at Stalin's Western apologists.

In part two he explores how present day stories of human rights abuses across the world are still rewritten.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Documentary

Useful Idiots

Episode 2

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC World Service Core

About this data