Robert Conquest - What to Do When the Russians Come

If deemed suitable, you will be incorporated into the burgeoning government apparatus at a flat salary.

Theatrical enterprises and the entertainment industry will come under the control of government administrators and will be severely curtailed. Productions of plays and films will be cut back and their predominant style will be stereotyped and will adhere to the dogma of “socialist realism” (see Artist; Writer ). Censorship will be strict, and comedy and “satire” will be bland to the point of toothlessness. The repertoire will be meager and restricted to safe and unexceptionable material. Theatrical people, even more than academics (see above), are given to indiscretion, love gossip, and say what they feel like saying at the moment when they feel like saying it. Break yourself of this habit. Keep your grievances and your witticisms to yourself. This will not be easy since you will see the plum roles going to mediocre performers who happen to be members of the Party or who stand well with it. But you must persevere.

This class of work will be terminated.

Aircraft factories will be nationalized, drastically reduced in scale, and subject to exceptionally stringent security controls. Key technicians may be dispatched to the USSR. (See also Scientist; Industrial Worker ).

Officially, drinking will be discouraged, but the State will need its large income from taxes on liquor, so alcohol will be easy enough to obtain. Quality, as in the case of most other consumer goods, will be sacrificed to quantity, and those better brands that survive will be available only at great cost and to privileged purchasers. Home brews will be much cheaper and more potable than most State products, so there will be a great proliferation in illicit distilling. Heavy drinking and drunkenness will sharply increase. Partly, as in the Soviet Union and other Communist countries, this will be the result of the general unpleasantness of life; partly it will be because of the dearth of other forms of entertainment.

Although drunkenness will be more or less tolerated, since drinkers seldom become politically troublesome, alcoholism leading to persistent lateness or trouble on the job or to rowdy behavior in public will not. For the drunks who are found littering the streets, there will be the kind of rugged drying-up centers and sobering-up tanks that exist at the present time in Soviet cities, where the offender is dehydrated, deloused, made to go “cold turkey,” and not released until detoxicated.

You will be shot or sent to a labor camp quicker than most.

Your premises will be looted more efficiently and less crudely than most by men sent by senior Russian officers to skim off the cream of your stock. If you work in a small way and maintain your shop in a shabby and unobtrusive condition, you may be allowed to continue on a reduced scale, as you can serve as a point where Americans can bring their remaining small treasures that you will then resell on commission to the occupiers.

No new buildings will be erected for some time. You may obtain work on rebuilding and repairs. Eventually, buildings will be constructed according to Soviet principle. Take care to avoid all styles that are original, “modern,” and imaginative and stick to the concrete-box type of architecture. You will be a government employee, on a fixed salary, with occasional bonuses for acceptable service.

Styles differing in any marked degree from “socialist realism” will not receive permission to be exhibited. Socialist Realism is a form of Victorian academic painting and sculpture used to point up morals acceptable to and glorifying the State and the Communist leadership. The style was instituted by Stalin in 1934 when he officially decreed that art must be “the truthful depiction of reality in its revolutionary development.” By “truthful.” Stalin meant Communist in content and photographic in form. For half a century Soviet art has been frozen in this vulgar and stodgy posture. After the Occupation, American artists will also be required to adhere to the tradition of Soviet art and will find it safer and more profitable to abandon all thought of being adventurous and experimental.

On the other hand, employment will be readily available in the mass production of propaganda posters, crude cartoons, and the illustration of Party literature. There will be a continuous demand for portraits, statues, and murals depicting those political figures who are in good odor, although if you are commissioned to execute such set pieces of the Communist leadership, you should, if possible, design them in such a way that the figures of those members of the original cast who have fallen into disfavor can easily be erased at a later date.

General instructions as to style and content will be issued regularly by the science and culture department of the Central Committee of the Communist party, so there will be no actual need for an artist to worry about giving offense as long as he follows the simple official pronouncements. However, artists ambitious for more than average success and remuneration will be well-advised to keep abreast of political developments. Still, caution is needed, and it is not advisable to attach yourself too closely to any single patron, who might suddenly disappear in a reshuffle.

If you receive your diploma after four years at an official art school, you will be registered as a member of the Union of Artists. With your diploma, you will be ipso facto “an artist.” Without it, you will not be able to join the union and so will never be eligible to exhibit in any museum or gallery or in any of the officially sponsored art exhibits; as an artist, you will be a lifelong “nonperson.” If you wish, you can work on your own, without much fear of actual arrest, at least for this reason, although you can only put up your pictures on the walls of your own apartment, where people will be cautious about coming to see them and more cautious still about expressing an opinion about them.

If you are fortunate enough to become a member of the union, we would advise you, unless you are a born intriguer, not to become too deeply involved with its caucuses and committees. Artists who emerge on the wrong side are liable to denunciation and expulsion, with the consequent end of their careers.

At first there will be a great decline in the number of teams since resources will be lacking. The whole sphere of sports will be brought under Party control. Then, selected teams will be fostered in all the main games. Thus, the professional athlete temporarily out of a job in his speciality and confident of his skill should stay in training as long as he can in the hope of returning.

Professionalism will be unknown in theory, but in practice athletes will be given office and other jobs at which they will not be required to work, so that they will be professional in fact if not in name. But the teams will be sponsored by the bodies supposedly employing them—that is, by various bureaucratic and party institutions. The secret police has always been prominent among these in Communist countries, and some athletes may not wish to work, even in this indirect way, for such a body— even apart from the fact that the police team is naturally always the most unpopular with the fans. On the other hand, if you are good, transfer to a secret police team may be hard to avoid.