Robert Conquest - What to Do When the Russians Come

Your life will, of course, be automatically forfeit. However, if you are determined to preserve it at all costs, your chances are a good deal better than those of, say, the Maoists or the Trotskyites (see below) at the other end of the political spectrum. In East Germany, large numbers of ex-Nazis were admitted to the Communist party, to some extent because the Nazis and the Communists had similar authoritarian affinities but, more importantly, because, to save themselves, the Nazis had nowhere else to go; and the Communists were glad to accept them since they needed any recruits they could get. (At one time the Communist Central Committee, the highest organ of the DDR, contained fourteen ex-Nazis to merely two ex-Social Democrats.) Even more encouraging is the example of Piasecki, once the leader of the very small and very extreme Polish Fascist party. When he fell into Russian hands, he was told by Ivan Serov himself, deputy head of the Soviet secret police, that he was as good as dead already, but if he agreed to collaborate, the Russians could use him. He was made head of PAX, a body directed toward the subversion of the Catholic Church and, at the same time, was allowed or encouraged to carry out private financial transactions that made him the richest man in Poland. So you can see that there is no need to despair, and that, paradoxically, if you are a right-wing politician with a strong anti-Communist record, you may yet have a better future (at least for the time being) than many of your more “progressive” colleagues. As in the case of Piasecki, you can take additional heart from the case of Tatarescu in Romania. He had actually been a signatory of Hitler’s Anti-Comintern Pact; but while Socialists and moderates were being arrested, the Russians made him foreign minister, a post that he managed to hold for some years.

If you are a political columnist or commentator, or have otherwise become known for ideas antipathetic to the Communist view, you will have little chance of remaining at liberty. Anyhow, you will have no future in journalism. If the offense you have committed is judged to be minor, you might be able to secure some sort of job in the bureaucracy. We would suggest that you acquire some appropriate skill such as bookkeeping. If your field has been reasonably far removed from politics, however, you may be allowed to carry on for a time until you can be replaced by a young Communist who has been trained to present your subject in an impeccable Marxist-Leninist light.

Censorship will be imposed immediately on the arrival of the Russians and all “anti-Soviet” staff will be turned off. Newspapers that are considered to have had a particularly anti-Soviet bias will be expropriated and handed over to the Communist party or some other Communist-sponsored organization. In any case, one or other of the main newspapers and television stations in each locality will be delivered up to the Party and renamed. Those non-Communist papers and stations allowed to survive will be given the task of representing the views of the “Democratic” and “Republican” parties which form part of the “coalition” government until they too fade away.

Your organization will be suppressed. Trials will be held in Washington and in the South in which men totally without KKK sympathy or background will be branded as such. The Soviet authorities will have little use for real KKK members, who are seldom as “literate” as John Birchers (see above); but those who have specialized in anti-Semitism and have any journalistic or demagogic flair may come to some arrangement, and be retrospectively proved not to have been KKK men at all.

Lawyers will, in general, be regarded as a hostile class element. This will be more so in their case than similar strata because so many of them are involved in the public life of pre-Occupation America and concerned with rights, balances, constitutionality, and common law—all totally opposed to the Communist principle.

Casualties, therefore, will be high.

However, under the leadership of lawyers already of Communist persuasion, of whom there are some, a new body of lawyers will be built up, in which, if you survive and are able to accept education in the newer legal principles, you may obtain employment.

Some lawyers will be needed, especially those with the histrionic talents of an Andrei Vishinsky, for the upcoming series of spectacular show trials. Compliant judges will also be required.

The profession will, naturally, be brought under control like the others. A well-purged “bar association” will be headed by Communist officials. Judges at all levels who are still at their posts after the first phase will be replaced “constitutionally.” Where they are at present elected, Communist-style elections will provide suitable replacements. Where they are appointed, as with the Supreme Court and so forth, the new political leaders will act accordingly.

The new judges will interpret the Constitution to suit the wishes of the occupying power and the processes of Sovietization.

Should any constitutional amendments be required, they will be dealt with by the puppet Congress and through fake popular votes. In fact, Communist-type constitutions are full of the same sort of guarantees of civic rights as are to be found in the present Constitution of the United States. But a few changes will nevertheless be necessary—in particular, say, a Thirtieth and Thirty-first Amendment, respectively—institutionalizing the Soviet economic system and officially making the Communist party the central power in the land.

If you do continue to practice, you will have to change your courtroom style. In a Soviet-type court, especially where there is any trace whatever of a political tinge to the case, lawyers are not expected to get into arguments. The defense lawyer, in particular, is supposed to represent not so much the interests of his client as those of the community; and there have been many cases under this system in which they have strongly dissociated themselves from their client’s pleas of innocence.

You will not, moreover, be operating in a private and independent capacity. You will be a member of the “collegium” of lawyers in your area, paid and controlled by the State, and allotted to clients as suits the authorities.

Unless you have a very strong stomach, therefore, our advice would be that you abandon the profession at the outset. So you should now put your mind to training yourself for some other means of supporting your family.

Your job will be comparatively safe, if you can bear the conditions imposed on you. Your first duty will be to carry out the removal from your shelves of a large part of their contents. Politically unsuitable books, together with those considered pornographic or decadent, will be proscribed; you will be surprised at the manner in which the labels of pornography and decadence have been extended to cover a very wide range of literature. Your old reference books, such as encyclopedias, will be withdrawn and pulped.

You should keep handy a pair of sharp scissors and a supply of paste as you will have to cut out or replace those entries in the new style encyclopedias and reference books that become politically inconvenient—a normal Soviet practice. As the years go by, even the more harmless books on your shelves will be gradually replaced as works commissioned and printed by the State begin to appear in adequate numbers. Experience from the Soviet Union and particularly from Eastern European countries suggests that you will not be kept very busy checking these out. If you can safely save and secrete some of the books that are being discarded, well and good; although your superiors will be on the lookout for this, and it may be hazardous for you or your friends to be caught reading them.