Heritage Foundation Crazy Board
- How One Man Influenced The Republican Party’s Transformation Into The Grand Old Putin Party
He Formed The First Young Republicans Club In The Soviet Union, But Soured On America After Ukraine’s Orange Revolution
Russian emigrant Edward Lozansky became a Republican shortly after arriving in America with an improbable story that led to Capital Hill and a 40-year career which has evolved into him becoming the dean of the Putin apologist propagandists in Washington, D.C.
The anti-communist crusader emigrated from Moscow to the United States via Rome in 1977 and since then quickly managed to ingratiate himself into the highest level of American politics and stay there for four decades.
Today, he’s sharing space in Moscow with Vladimir Putin’s top propagandist in Eastern Ukraine with his fake university.
Within months of arrival, his Soviet-themed Romeo and Juliet story of family separation became the lever through which he made friends in western New York’s Jewish community and how his story was quickly carried to the floor of the United States Congress by his Republican representative in the House.
Just weeks later, even President Jimmy Carter was lobbying for the cause of reuniting Lozansky and his family on the world stage.
Two years later, he joined the Young Republicans, and his wife Tatiana formed the first Young Republicans Chapter behind the Iron Curtain — just after Senators Jack Kemp and Bob Dole enacted a marriage in absentia ceremony for the Lozanskys inside the Capitol.
After Republicans rejected Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, Lozansky’s love story with the GOP took an especially bitter, tragic twist.
Russian propaganda — and very specifically Dr. Lozansky’s opinion — holds the United States responsible for Eastern European “color” revolutions which have overthrown oppressive regimes, oligarchies and kleptocracies like exiled Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych.
It’s a viewpoint which for good reason, has drawn quite vociferous American dissent.
The Republican Party’s thorough indoctrination into the right-wing of Russian politics didn’t happen overnight.
Lozansky’s World Russia Forum invited people to Washington, D.C. for decades, often into the Senate’s inner sanctum.
His issues were on the floor of Congress since the late 1970s.
Through his friendship Paul Weyrich, Lozansky was involved in the conservative movement nearby the one man who created of nearly every significant conservative group — from A.L.E.C. to the Council for National Policy to the Free Congress Foundation, Heritage Foundation and the Krieble Foundation — which started in the 1980s and consumed Republican political thought in the 2000s and to this day.
He was also close with the Cato Institute.
Through the years, his associates from Russia and his associates in the United States government came to a singular conclusion about first Lozansky’s activities, and later with the entire Russia lobby’s attributes.
They both realized that Lozansky leaned unusually heavily towards right-wing or Republican politics, and rarely if ever towards Democrats.
Disingenuously, Lozansky had blamed that bias on lacking access to the elite Clinton administration in 2000 when the Navy’s CNA Corp. sponsored the World Russia forum. His friend Paul Weyrich told C-SPAN during the coup which ended Soviet rule, that he had personally “trained” the Russian official in charge of privatizing — read: making his friends wealthy on sweetheart deals — state-run companies and assets for President Boris Yeltsin all the way through 1996.
In retrospect, it seems plain that Dr. Lozansky targeted the conservative movement and Republican party with his Russian propaganda efforts.
And the professor’s efforts to Russianize the Republican Party succeeded to a terrifying degree.
- Where does Russian disinformation incubate in US?kyivindependent.com Investigation: Where does Russian disinformation incubate in US?
The war in Ukraine is being decided on the battlefields in the south and east of the country. But how it’s discussed in America helps shape those battlefields. Military aid from the West has helped Ukrainian forces turn the tide. Economic aid has allowed the Ukrainian economy to cling
Where does Russian disinformation incubate in US?
One KSORS board member — and regular guest of Russian Center New York — was Edward Lozansky, whose career is even more intriguing than Branson’s.
Lozansky is a former Soviet physicist who fled to the United States but then spent much of his life cozying up to both the Kremlin and the political right in the U.S.
He published pro-Kremlin articles on platforms including RT. But that’s only a fraction of his work. He founded the club Russia House and the annual World Russia Forum event, both of which brought together Russian VIPs and U.S. political movers and shakers. In earlier years, it attracted many American lawmakers but its star faded as Russia ramped up militarism in the 2010s.
Lozansky would come to know many important conservatives. He knew conservative icon Paul Weyrich, who founded a huge number of powerful organizations, including the Heritage Foundation and Free Congress Foundation. Through his many organizations and events such as Russia House and World Russia Forum, Lozansky would get to know even more.
Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation sponsored Lozansky’s American University in Moscow and the World Russia Forum. Weyrich once wrote an angry letter slamming the FBI for not granting enough visas to participate in the World Russia Forum in the early 2000s. He mentioned that some of these people are Russian businessmen, lawmakers and other government servants.
Wikileaks in 2009 released a hacked email from Stratfor consultancy’s Eurasia analyst Lauren Goodrich saying Lozansky “has a crazy reputation to where ppl say they aren’t sure exactly who he works for. Americans say he is part of the Putin disinformation club and Russians say he is CIA conspiracy… lots of rumors on both sides. I haven’t met him yet, but hear among the inner circles that he is owned by Surkov. His info is too…. pro-Russian underneath.”
Lozansky was active in the lobbying space. He wrote a book in Russian entitled “Ethnic groups and lobbying in the United States,” which was published by International Relations, a publisher launched by the Soviet Foreign Ministry. He once sued then-U.S. President Barack Obama in an effort to get certain sanctions removed from Russia.
His name also appears on a list of contacts in a FARA filing by the Mark Saylor Company lobbying firm in 2010. The company was registering to work for the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two breakaway states created by Russian military meddling in sovereign nations, much like what it’s done in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The former physicist is acquainted with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. They both graduated from the prestigious National Research Nuclear University and Kislyak was a regular at Lozansky’s events.
Lozansky now heads the American University in Moscow, whose fellows included many disinformation writers, including the creator of The Duran, Alexander Mercouris. Through the university, Lozansky also hosted events in Moscow.
Lozansky also contributed to the Russian think tank Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), which is directed by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service and is closely affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs according to the U.S. State Department. SCF was sanctioned by the U.S. for allegedly interfering in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
It regularly publishes misleading articles in English.
Lozansky has not replied to a request for comment about him or his university.
- Documentary about Weyrich and Krieble involvement in Collapse of USSR Playing For Power (2012)
Thanks to davel@lemmy.ml for finding this, and thanks to the Neutrality Studies YouTube channel for posting this lost documentary!
