Robert Conquest - What to Do When the Russians Come

On past form, you should remember that, once the 20–30 percent of the adult population who are suspect for other reasons have been dealt with, it is always the farmer who is the first victim of mass operations against society in general. Sooner or later, the Russians always impose their own system of farming. In some cases, there has been no intermediate period at all, and collectivization has been introduced at once without any preliminary phase. In America, it is almost certain that a more gradual approach will be attempted. In any event, after a longer or shorter interim, many small farmers will in turn be declared kulaks and deported to the Arctic, while the rest will be ordered to merge their farms with those of their twenty or thirty nearest neighbors. If you are among these, you will be permitted to keep an acre or two and a few animals in your own name. The rest will cease to be your property, and you will work your “collective farm” with your neighbors under a Communist-appointed director sent in from the city. No later than the time of the collectivization, the system of identity cards will be transformed into a system of internal passports, whereupon the rural population will be discouraged from leaving the countryside by being forbidden to visit even the local town for periods of more than five or six days.

The individual’s chance of arrest and deportation during the actual collectivization campaign is perhaps one in eight, higher in the case of farmers in prosperous areas.

Full equality of both sexes will be officially decreed. However, no “affirmative action “ in the case of women or any other section of the community will be taken or permitted, and you will be expected not to voice any complaints you may have in this regard. No attempt will be made to secure female participation in any job through quotas, and in practice very few women will attain positions or high-salary brackets within their profession. In Communist countries, women traditionally predominate in teaching and the lower ranks of the medical profession and are prominent in manual labor in the cities and particularly on the farms but rarely attain important political or professional status.

Present-day feminist organizations will be wound up, but a women’s organization under Communist supervision will be set up, with the main object of establishing “friendly relations” with their Russian women’s counterpart and the preaching of “peaceful reconciliation.” Posts in it will be available to American women with organizational experience, especially those now prominent in pro-Soviet women’s bodies. It might also be noted that mass arrests will have removed more men than women, in the proportion of perhaps ten to one, and conscription into the “American People’s Army” will have drained millions of able-bodied young men from the normal work force. Farms will have been particularly effected, with the result that unskilled manual labor on the land, as elsewhere, will rely to a great extent on women.

Conditions with regard to schooling, registration in a union, and State control, are the same as those for painters and sculptors (see Artist). Film style will be that of socialist realism. Directors who attempt to be too clever and are caught by the censor or secret police will suffer the same penalty as given such men as Sergei Paradjanov, maker of two of the few interesting modern Soviet films, Sayat Nova and Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors. In January 1974, he was arrested and sent to a labor camp on a charge of homosexuality. It is KGB policy, when destroying a person on political or other grounds, to discredit them morally for good measure. (See also Actor, Musician .)

State employee. Lower salary. No strikes.

Services will be speedy, drab, and uniform. Atheist forms of committal will be encouraged, religious forms banned or perfunctorily performed. Mortuary “chapels” will be secularized, and only in rare cases will services be carried out in cathedrals, churches, chapels, or other religious buildings, the majority of which will in any case be closed or devoted to nonreligious uses (see Clergy ). However, Communist burials, while lacking frills, will at least be inexpensive. You will eventually become a state employee.

The majority of furniture stores will close. Most citizens will lack the funds to buy new furniture and will make do with what they have. The furniture industry will be State-owned, and when it gets back on its feet, its products will be of poor quality and indifferent design.

As we saw in the last chapter, private motoring will have enormously decreased. There will be very few cars on the roads and consequently no need for a large number of gas stations. The oil companies will in any case be nationalized, and there will be only one brand and probably only one grade of gas. Even large cities will possess only a handful of gas stations, usually tucked away in obscure and inconvenient spots. (The elite will have their own gas stations, limousines, and chauffeurs.) Although there are fewer cars, production and servicing standards will be such that motor mechanics’ skills will be saleable on the black market. And you may also try your hand at, and profit by, the repairing and refurbishing of bicycles.

Because of the strategic importance of Hawaii, halfway between the United States and China and in a position to dominate the Pacific, stringent measures will be called for. The able-bodied members of the population, including the native Hawaiians, will join a “voluntary” defense organization to build, in their spare time, underground bunkers and fortifications or to enlarge and strengthen those that already exist. The remainder are likely to be shipped to the mainland as with Japanese-Americans (see below). In time, Hawaii will most probably be seeded with Russian colonists in order to make it totally secure. Old Russian claims to the islands are likely to be revised, and direct annexation to the USSR is probable, as will also be the case with Alaska. (The USSR has annexed territory from all the Communist countries on which it borders.)

Male homosexuality is illegal under all Communist regimes. The usual sentence will be five to ten years in a labor camp. As with other regulations, this will not be invariably enforced if political considerations make it convenient in individual cases to proceed otherwise. The regime occasionally prefers to secure the collaboration of the homosexual by holding the other alternative over him. In the takeover period, the police will probably be too busy to pay much attention to the persecution of homosexuals in general, but gay liberation and organizations designed to promote their interests will at once be banned, and those who attempt to persist with them will be instantly arrested.

Hotel owners will be dispossessed and, if they are fortunate, may be given employment in lower grades of the industry. Those hotels that are permitted to continue will operate in a notably run-down condition, although some of the luxury hotels will be maintained at a level somewhat below their best in order to cater to the Soviet and Communist elite and other important visitors. In these major establishments, all rooms will be bugged, with a special central office listening in at all times. Only “cleared” and reliable staff will remain, and they will be required to act as government informers. In ordinary hotels, also State-run, jobs will be available at a reduced salary, but there will be less work to perform as little service will be given beyond the provision of a more-or-less clean room.