So what can we expect? The history of Russian foreign intelligence provides some clues. The S.V.R., situated like its American counterpart in a forest outside the capital, inherited from the K.G.B. a large and skilled unit in charge of disinformation, Service A. The “A” stood for active measures, as disinformation was renamed in the early 1960s. Only now is it becoming possible to reconstruct some of Service A’s most brazen operations, with the help of K.G.B. memos and briefings discovered in recent years in security archives in former satellite states.

Racial engineering is an old but sharp tool in the active measures arsenal, deployed equally against — and among — African-Americans, Jews and white nationalists, to pitch these groups against one other and to amplify social conflict. On Christmas night 1959, for example, swastikas and “Jews Out” was daubed, in red and white paint, on the walls of the newly reopened synagogue in Cologne, Germany. Over the next seven weeks a vast anti-Semitic hate campaign swept through West Germany, other countries in Western Europe and the United States. By mid-February, the government in Bonn had counted 833 anti-Semitic incidents across all West Germany.

K.G.B. officers understood that anti-Semitism was a real problem and that they could restart a real fire with fake sparks. At one Jewish cemetery in Staten Island, N.Y., 100 headstones were defaced with swastikas, smeared in yellow paint. On Jan. 4, 1960, three synagogues in New York City were desecrated within 24 hours. Red swastikas, six feet high, were painted on the Free Synagogue of Flushing, Queens. The Corona Jewish Center, also in Queens, and Temple Emanu-El, at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street in Manhattan, were similarly defaced. In the following days more acts of vandalism were reported, including at a yeshiva in Brooklyn. At least 13 cities across the United States were affected, including Washington, Detroit, Cincinnati and Chicago.

Less than a year later, another insidious example of racial engineering appeared, this time in Africa. The 15-page pamphlet started with a one-line, all-caps cover page, inscribed “TO OUR DEAR FRIENDS.” The document purported to come from the “African Friends Association,” allegedly based in the United States. “We, Negroes living in the United States of America, are going to reveal the truth to you about the way the Americans really treat people with dark skin,” the pamphlet said. The forgers reported, for example — truthfully — that Edward Aaron, 34, had been abducted, beaten and castrated by Klansmen in Birmingham, Ala. The K.G.B. circulated and published its paper in English and French in at least 16 African countries.

“This poisonous little racist tract is a headache for our diplomatic missions in Africa,” Richard Helms of the C.I.A. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 1961 — a particular headache because the K.G.B. largely stuck to the facts.