The
Deception
Lexicon

The Cold War was fought in language as much as in hardware. Both sides built entire vocabularies around deception — Soviet, Western, military, political. These terms were precise tools with specific operational meanings. Most of that precision has been lost in popular usage.
What follows is a working analyst's glossary: definitions as they were actually used, with the variations and disputes that mattered in practice. These are the concepts that animate The Long War series — and the shadow war it depicts.